Victory in exile [Quinquagesima]

d[-_-]b LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE d[-_-]b

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• 1 Samuel 16:1-13

• 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

• St. Luke 18:31-43

 

Grace to you and peace. (1 Thess 1)
 
Jesus speaks to you on this day from His Gospel heard, saying:

“And Jesus said to him, ‘Recover your sight; your faith has saved you.’”

 
In light of the last three Sundays, listen to Jesus again predict His death and resurrection, with a few changes:
“Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished. For He will be sown on roads and eaten by birds and will be mocked and insulted and spit upon among the rocks with no moisture. They will scourge Him with thorns and kill Him. And the third day He will rise again and produce fruit an hundred-fold.”
 
Jesus goes to His own city. The city He has dwelt in since Solomon brought His Tabernacle into Jerusalem. For nearly 1000 years, the Lord’s home was the Holy of Holies, seated between the cherubim on the Ark of the covenant, in the blood of the sacrifices.
 
At the right time, He took up His Tabernacle Himself, which is His body. He did not wait for man, but stepped down into His true form, burst forth from the Holy of holies that was the Virgin’s Womb, and tabernacled among us with His own Body and rational soul.
 
All this He did because He had heard His people’s cries from out of the Promised Land. Their abuse reached His ears. Their complaints rose to such a crescendo, He looked with His own eyes and saw that His land flowing with milk and honey, had become a desert. Jerusalem the free and home of the Brave, had become Egypt of the pagans and Babylon of the destroyers.
 
The Lord gives us the example of Jerusalem to teach us that the true land flowing with milk and honey is not of this earth. That even if we were to be geographically located as a religion, satan would build his democracy and make sure to raze such a place to the ground.
 
Just as he has done with each and every community that dared gather in God’s name, receive His sacraments, and offer their sacrifices to Him. On earth, there is no safe space for the Christian. The State will always be out for blood.
 
But so what? So we have been exiled? We have been placed here by God. He has given us this life and this location to live it. Though we have lamented over our sins the last 2 Sundays, today we rejoice in our exile, for it is there that we truly learn to lean on the Lord, and follow Him.
 
As King David said in 1 Chron. 21:13 “I am in great distress. Let me fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is very great, but do not let me fall into the hand of man.”
 
Behold, we are going to Jerusalem. Behold we are going into exile, Jesus says, so hold on tight. We are not finding a land of peace, the world would quickly devour it as it devours God’s Word. We are not finding a land of milk and honey, Cronyists would quickly buy up all the market and charge us two arms and two legs for the privilege.
 
No. Brothers and sisters, we are going to Jerusalem. Jerusalem the desert. Jerusalem the wilderness. Jerusalem the land flowing with pagans and sin.  Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! (Mt 23:37)
The land that hands over Jesus, mocks Him, spits on Him, insults, scourges, and kills Him. 
 
So Now, “…He said to them, ‘But now, he who has a money bag, let him take it, and likewise a knapsack; and he who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one. ³⁷ For I say to you that this which is written must still be accomplished in Me: ‘And He was numbered with the transgressors.’ For the things concerning Me have an end’” (Luke 22:36-37).
 
So now we prepare for this life in the wilderness. But this life and this preparation did not help us in Advent, it did not prevent the disciples from forsaking Jesus, and it did not prevent the death of God on the cross. 
 
Then what good are money bag, knapsack, and sword against a world that will always crucify Jesus, no matter the time period? They are for life. They are for a life of gathering around the risen Christ to receive His forgiveness.
 
Just as Egypt sheltered Jesus as a toddler against “God’s chosen”, so too does our exile today shelter us from other great shame and vice. Totally backwards right? You would think I would stand up here and condemn all that the capitalists pigs have offered us, but that would just be acknowledging their mass distractions.
 
Jesus presents a blind man to us as our lesson today and says, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say ‘We see,’ your guilt remains” (John 9:41). If we had eyes that were not blind, we would find faith in Egypt and in Babylon, as the Lord did. Last week, St. Paul boasted in his weakness, from 2 Cor, and this week we do the same.
 
We boast in our worldly weakness. We do not have the majority vote. We are not in the calculations for “true democracy”. We do not count at the world stage voting table. 
Where we do count is in the confession of our sins and the receiving of absolution. 
 
This is the lesson of the blind man: don’t lose sight of Christ. Don’t lose Him among the voting powers, and the world policing powers, and the hatred-of-your-fellow-man powers that the devil and his ilk offer to you on silver platters. Don’t take that ticket!
 
For Christ does not remain in Egypt, Babylon, or Jerusalem. He does not remain to wage war against those who are “morally worse” or whom our television has deemed “unworthy”. Christ moves on to glory. That is the glory of the cross. That cross-roads of history where God places Himself in the hands of hateful sinners in order to open heaven for them.
 
Yes, we live this life and fight for it, but we do not become so invested in it that we lose our sight. Jesse, David’s father from our Old Testament reading, was blinded. He was raising too many sons, in his estimation. He would never choose the extra one, meant to shepherd the sheep.
 
Similarly, St. Paul must spend an entire chapter of his epistle on love, because we simply do not choose it over everything else in this world. We fight, but we fight the good fight of faith. We buy sword and money bag, but we invest the rest in the Faith, in God’s Church.
 
Against invasion, nukes, and failure of moral character, Jesus plots out the best course: the cross. The Word of the Cross is the Gospel and the Gospel is the power of salvation. The only time it is in our hands is when Christ gives us His Body and Blood to eat and drink. Other than that we fight a fight we cannot win, on our own.
 
We fight not because it depends on us, but on Christ. Since He is victorious, we are only fighting the final skirmishes of a triumphant God over His enemies of sin, death, and the devil. Though they are violent skirmishes, there is no more question as to which side will be the victor.
 
The victory goes to life and light, as is evidenced by the blind man seeing light today. His eyes are opened and He sees Jesus. The God-man Who is able to make deserts fruitful and wildernesses a paradise. The Christ Who is able to place His Church in the midst of the Babylon of war and death and force peace and life to spread from it.
 
In Baptismal grace, the Flood of Jesus’s Blood washes over His Church and through His bought and paid for Faith, floods the world. In these last Days, the world tears itself apart, defeats itself, shoots itself in the foot. The judgement of heaven seems to be self-inflicted, but God has always worked through men and through means. 
 
In the hope that Christ’s victory gives, we have the front row seat to the end of the world and that is fine. Not that we rejoice in suffering, but we rejoice in our Lord’s victory over this world and its ruler. We are excused from that judgement, having been baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ. Death’s dread angel sheaths its sword as it spots the Blood of the Lamb of God painted upon us.
 
Dear Christians, we are not losing any war. Sin may cause us to lose the Faith of Victory, but there is no loss in Word and Sacrament. We cling to those for dear life, because the promises of life, light, and salvation are found in them alone; in Christ alone. 
 
Peace reigns and all things have been handed over to the Lord of Peace, Jesus Christ.
 
In faith, we ask along with Psalm 2:
“Why do the nations rage, And the people plot a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves, And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the Lord and against His Christ, saying,
“Let us break Their bonds asunder and cast away their yoke from us.”
He who sits in the heavens shall laugh to scorn; The Lord shall hold them in derision.
Then He shall speak to them in His wrath, And distress them in His deep displeasure:
“Yet I have set My King On My holy hill of Zion.”
 
I love that. It is the Lord’s announcement of the Gospel that frightens the world and stirs them to a deep frenzy. Did you notice? When God announces that His Chosen is set on His holy hill of Zion, when God proclaims the Gospel of Christ high and lifted up on a cross as a city on a hill, it is in that declaration of victory that the world is condemned.
 
Yet, it is in that same declaration that causes light to shine in the darkness, the Gospel to prosper in exile, and the flame of courage to rise once again in timid hearts. Are we afraid of “wars and rumors of wars”? There is no rumor in salvation in Christ and there is no war in Jesus’s victory over death. All is won.
All is calm. All is bright. Round yon sacrament, Body and Blood.